I was also wondering about the speed these changes just appeared in Cicero - things like dynamic pops and food resources are not easy or small changes. It is also a little eery that these changes all work together as well. That doesn’t just “happen”.
This seems like what happened - I think some of these “other designs” may have actually been quite advanced, which means it hasn’t taken much to get them into Cicero.
Rome needs a nerf pretty bad. They’re the only power in Italy that has iron that lets you build heavy infantry. Plus they get all these free CBs against other states. Plus they have a bunch of subjects that give them massive manpower boosts. Every game as Etruria or Samnia I play is great until Rome DoWs you, then ur dead.
This is all already available on the beta branch in Steam, but the devs cover the new systems replacing Monarch Power here.
Kevin, I have not been following this closely, but I understand that huge changes are coming quite soon. Are you saying that we can already get the “new game” if we download from the Steam beta branch, or just that one element of the changes is now available?
Steam beta branch has almost everything from devdiaries.
Be prepared for a very rough state of the game though. Missing text, missing icons, some things don’t work at all, and naturally AI doesn’t know what’s happening.
The former, but it’s hot code fresh off the dev machines. Treat it like a chance to preview and sample some of the new mechanics and features they’re talking about as opposed to something that you’d play a serious game of, if that makes sense? For me, I’m just waiting for 1.2 to release. Even when it’s “done”, I’m expecting there to be bugs and issues just because of the size and scope of what they’re doing.
Thanks. Yes, I was thinking of sampling rather than playing a full game, but I am not enough of a fan to want to sample some little corner of the changes, I wanted to be sure I am looking at a rough draft of the whole.
From what I understand, the 1.2 beta currently available is, to all intents and purposes, the releasable version of Cicero, missing only some localizations. The official release is supposed to be end of the week.
Will probably dive in tomorrow.
Anyone here play much on the Beta branch lately? I’m not naive enough to think they can overhaul so much and have things polished and bug free, so I am debating if I should dive in straight away or wait for the first hotfix or two.
I’ve enjoyed playing around with it, but I’m more interested in the EU4 update dropping next week so will play that over IR.
Yeah, the Manchu update sounds great. I really liked the China/Japan expansion but there were some frustrations with playing the Manchu that ultimately put me off in that region, particularly when the Ming just refused to implode. The new update sounds like it addresses all the things that prevented me from playing more games out there.
There’s just too many good games right now, holy crap.
With 1.2 coming out soon, probably a good time to mention that Imperator: Rome is part of Game Pass for PC so if you don’t already own it and want to try out Imperator that might be a low cost method.
Not sure if the Game Pass gets Paradox’s updates at the same time as other versions, but perhaps?
There are some bugs mentioned in the latest dev diary thread, so beware.
I might get into this in 1.2, but I’m still a bit worried about having to micro some boring part. Still, it’s looking better.
I started playing this past weekend. I’ve had no crash problems except for a mod I tried. Yesterday’s patch has some weirdness too it, but nothing too severe. Note, though, my tolerance for bugs is much higher than the average person I reckon.
The changes are not surprisingly substantial. For civilized nations, only slaves can manually be moved now. Tribes can still move tribesman. There’s a host of buildings and city improvements to manage migration, promotions, assimilation and conversions. The result is a more organic change, but it can be at the same time quite slow. It makes for colonizing new lands a very long term affair if playing near frontier regions (e.g. the Bosporus Kingdom.) The move away from ‘mana’ is overall a positive one I think as there is less reliance on good monarchs to progress. I do quite like the internal management options as I tend to play tall-ish more than paint the map (you can now easily move province and kingdom capitals, yay.) Map painters I don’t think need worry too much about that though aside from queuing up buildings to maintain tech advancement (libraries, academies.) For large nations with “mega” cities, food management might become an issue, but I don’t have any direct experience with that as yet.
Oh, there’s some more flavor now too between different regions and countries. There are a lot of generic ‘traditions’, but some more notable nations have specific ones (much like back in the day when EU4 first adopted them.) The AI seems improved too (Carthage actually expands now, as does Rome.)
Newish dev diary focusing on art design.
That is one monster update.
I think this may become my official video for taking my blood pressure. Man that guy us soothing.
I think Paradox should create a ASMR youtube channel, I’ve seen a few people saying several of the devs on streams have soothing voices.
(not actually serious)
10 hours of Europa Universalis 4 change log (1.1 - 1.30) ASMR by Peter Nicholson.